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Dystoria is a very ’80s/retro-inspired game that’s a bit difficult to describe (and is best shown by watching footage of it), but it is a lot of fun to play.
You pilot your spacecraft along a wireframe landscape of varying colours – e.g. blue are static, while green ones move, requiring you to get from A to B via these, and moving across at the right time. It takes a bit of getting used to in terms of how your ship ‘hugs’ the landscape, but it does come in handy since if a baddie’s shouting at you, strafeing left or right can quickly get you out of harm’s way.
You can collect ship parts along the way in order to build a better ship, and while Dystoria has that ‘just one more go’ factor, not only is it mind-bending beyond belief, but it’s also immensely difficult, with some enemies that don’t hug the terrain and instead fly about zapping seemingly never-ending lightning bolts at you that drain your shield and energy quickly, leading to imminent death… and this was on level 7 with 28 enemies to kill… and this is on the NORMAL difficulty.
Think I need to change to ‘easy’ 😉
Dystoria – first-run gameplay of ’80s-inspired shooter (1080p HD) – PC – DVDfeverGames
The only other difficulty I encountered is that when you select to invert the Y axis, for flying about, this doesn’t always stick, even though the menu has it down as being in effect. I presume this is a bug which can easily be fixed, and in the meantime you can correct it by unclicking the option, resuming the game and going back into the menu to click on it again and then resuming the game again… bit of a faff, but manageable in the meantime.
However, with music that often jumps between something akin to the theme from Airwolf, and something else by Tangerine Dream, the audio is a joy to let envelop your ears.
Dystoria is released tomorrow on PC/Steam, and click on the top image for the full-size version.
Dystoria – Official trailer
Important info:
- Publisher: Tri-Coastal Games
- Developer: Tri-Coastal Games
- Players: single player
- HDTV options: 1080p
My rig:
- Intel i7 Six Core Processor i7-5820K (3.3GHz) 15MB Cache
- ASUS® X99-A: ATX, HSW-E CPU, USB 3.0, SATA 6 GB/s Motherboard
- 16Gb Kingston Hyper-X Fury DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 8GB)
- 4GB nVidia GeForce GTX 980
- 250Gb Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540Mb/sR | 520Mb/sW)
- 3Tb 3.5″ SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200rpm 64Mb cache
- 16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
- CORSAIR 750W CS Series Modular 80 Plus ® Gold, Ultra Quiet
- Creative Sound Blaster Z 5.1 PCI-E Soundcard – OEM
- WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1
- Zalman Z11 Plus Black Mid Tower Case
|
GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
8 8 7 7 |
| OVERALL | 7.5 |
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.